A Pasta Recipe for Meh Mondays

Hello! Mia here, filling in for Melissa Clark today. How are you? I’m … tired. Maybe it’s the heat, maybe it’s just Monday, but I’m slow and sluggish, the human equivalent of that womp-womp trombone noise. I need a dinner that knows how bleh I am but also knows I’m hungry and want something substantial and nourishing. I need pasta nada.

Pasta nada, as Dwight Garner writes for The New York Times, is pantry pasta stripped to its barest of essentials. His puttanesca pasta nada is the classic dish made with just a few of the usual suspects, a combination selected for maximum oomph and ease. “Instead of employing each of the classic ingredients, try just, let’s say, black olives and anchovies,” Dwight writes in Step 1. “Or, use just finely minced garlic and a few capers. Or good canned tuna and tomatoes. These flavors cry out to be tested in variations.” (I’m also now realizing that pasta nada is economical and knows that I don’t want to go to the store in this heat; from one pasta puttanesca ingredient list come several pasta nadas. Thanks, pasta nada!)

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Puttanesca Pasta Nada

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Also in The Times, Melissa writes about Judith Jones, the editor who revolutionized American cookbook publishing. “By publishing a diverse roster of authors, including Madhur Jaffrey, Irene Kuo and Edna Lewis, she shined a light on cuisines and cooks routinely ignored in an age dominated by white home economists and male French chefs,” Melissa writes. She includes three recipes adapted from beloved cookbooks that Jones edited: Jaffrey’s shrimp pullao from “An Invitation to Indian Cooking,” Kuo’s stir-fried chicken with mushrooms and snow peas from “The Key to Chinese Cooking” and Lewis’s baked summer tomatoes from “The Taste of Country Cooking.”

Those vibrant recipes from cooking all-stars will surely help me get my mojo back, as will Lidey Heuck’s versatile stuffed peppers. They’re so practical — use whatever ground meat you like, plus that leftover rice in the fridge — and pleasing. All that savory goodness neatly contained in a brightly colored sweet pepper feels like a real pat-on-the-back moment.

It’s also impossible to feel meh while eating Hetty Lui McKinnon’s silken tofu with spicy soy dressing. The cold, smooth, creamy tofu, the punchy dressing, the fresh herbs — it all comes together to make a simple meal that feels like a little luxury.

But again: It’s hot, the weekend wore us out and this new week is just getting started. I say we slump into it — literally. Here’s Jessie Sheehan’s blackberry slump, a perfectly named summer dessert that doesn’t require an oven and takes less than 30 minutes. Use whatever berry you like — readers report delicious results with strawberries and blueberries. Pasta nada and a berry slump. Not too bad for a Monday.